Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official who served during part of Donald Trump’s tenure in the White House, has said that the former president’s rhetoric around nuclear weapons prompted multiple meetings among administration officials to prepare for the possibility of war.
In October 2020, Taylor was revealed to be the author of a New York Times op-ed attributed to “Anonymous,” in which he described how he and a small cadre of Trump officials had formed an alliance to keep Trump in check. In excerpts of Taylor’s new book, “Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump,” the former DHS official describes aides holding meetings in the White House to discuss Trump’s comments relating to nuclear war, including his tweets threatening other world leaders.
“In the national security world, anything having to do with nuclear weapons is handled with extreme sensitivity — well-planned, carefully scripted — yet we didn’t know what Trump might say at any given moment,” Taylor said in one excerpt.
The former DHS chief of staff recounted an example:
One day, [Trump] threatened North Korea ‘with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.’ He almost seemed to welcome a nuclear conflict, which terrified us.
On another occasion, Taylor recalled how then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis told him, early in Trump’s term, that because of the president’s rhetoric, “you all need to prepare like we’re going to war.”
Taylor added that DHS officials took the unprecedented step of convening “every top leader” in the department “to discuss the brewing crisis.”
“Experts walked through various scenarios of a nuclear strike on the U.S. homeland, dusted off response plans, and outlined best-case scenarios which nevertheless sounded horrifically grim,” Taylor said in his book. “I cannot provide the details, but I walked out of those meetings genuinely worried about the safety of the country. In my view, the department was unprepared for the type of nuclear conflict Trump might foment.”
“This is the first time to my knowledge that DHS thought there was the possibility, however remote, of Trump actually starting a war and us having to prepare for the nuclear fallout in the homeland,” Taylor added in a recent interview with Politico.
Chris Krebs, who was a DHS official at the same time as Taylor, confirmed to Politico that such meetings had taken place. Another former Trump administration official, Olivia Troye, who served as a DHS adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence, also confirmed the existence of such meetings.
“Yup. All true,” Troye said in a tweet citing Taylor’s book. “I was in these meetings regarding N. Korea. Talk about stress…”
Taylor’s book could be of interest to Department of Justice (DOJ) special counsel Jack Smith, who recently indicted Trump on 37 charges relating to his mishandling of sensitive government documents, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner said over the weekend.
“I would certainly subpoena Miles Taylor and put him before the grand jury to testify about what he knows, what he saw, and what he heard,” Kirschner said on MSNBC.
In his “Anonymous” op-ed, Taylor described himself as being “part of the resistance” within the Trump White House who saw a need to ensure that the president didn’t do anything too egregious, particularly when it came to national security. In 2020, weeks before he was revealed to be the author of the op-ed, Taylor criticized Trump for other comments he made behind closed doors, including expressing a desire to “maim” and “shoot” migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“This was a man with no humanity whatsoever,” Taylor said at the time.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.